Idols And Counterfeit Gods

I picked up your book because I read Sullivan’s blog and he was linking to rave, interesting reviews of it. But, the very title I think betrays the message. A cursory glance at the title might lead one to believe that you are indeed prescribing southern, small town living as the secret of a good life, in the way a self-help book might suggest more sleep, exercise and vegetables. Here is where I think the reviewers and marketing of the book have sold the story short. Although most of the fantastic reviews have focused primarily on your particular narrative about moving home, the value of simplicity and the profundity of suffering, I think one of the most important messages of the book–the dangers of idolatry–has been largely overlooked. The realization that your dad had idolized family and place in the same way that you had prioritized individual desire and career was, to me, the most poignant and universal aspect of the entire story. Your dad’s epiphany at the end of the book should encourage all Christians to work on identifying their idols, whether they are career, family, sexuality, city living, whatever.

I really appreciate that insight. Thank you. That back-porch epiphany I record in the book (and have recorded digitally, because of circumstances I describe in the book) was truly one of the most grace-filled moments of my life, and surely one of the greatest gifts my father has ever given me. And it just came, boom, out of nowhere, when I least expected it. In a back-porch conversation after Sunday dinner.

The problem that my dad, my sister Ruthie, and I had is that we each had our own idols — well, Ruthie and my dad had the same idol, but all of us had idols. My dad and I were left behind by Ruthie, and in the wake of her death had to deal with these idols. In my case, the grace God gave me through her passion caused a life-changing epiphany that made it possible for me to be reconciled in confidence to my home. And though my dad is not one for self-analysis or self-disclosure, I think that he would not have been able to have had the epiphany he had, or the liberating conversation he had with me that afternoon on the back porch, had Ruthie’s death and my moving back home not revealed something to him that changed his own heart.

The reader who wrote above recommended the book Counterfeit Godsby Tim Keller, the highly regarded minister who was her pastor when she lived in NYC. I looking it over, I’m struck by the aspect of the idols that Paw, Ruthie, and I served was that they were not obviously bad things, like Money, Sex, or Power. (Strictly speaking, none of those things are bad either, but they are so closely associated with misuse and abuse that we are rightly cautious of their effect on our moral sense).

In my own case, it was, I guess, Individual Fulfillment that was my idol. There is nothing wrong, and a lot right, with wanting to discover what one was made for, what one is good at, and wanting to find happiness and a sense of peace and belonging in the world. I had to leave my hometown to do that, and I’m glad I did. The problem is, our culture, and especially the professional class to which I belong, puts such a premium on Individual Fulfillment that it becomes hard to see that we can’t really live the unlimited, unfettered life. Even if we see it, as I eventually did in an intellectual sense, it is so hard to break those chains, and to see that we can find true fulfillment in limiting ourselves within stable relationships, and stability in place. We think that Individual Fulfillment is an ultimate good, when in fact it’s only a relative good. Thus we may not see how in seeking ourselves, and what we imagine is our own good, we fall short of the true mark.

In the case of Paw and Ruthie, their idol was Family And Place. Though they wouldn’t have put a theological spin on it, to fail to put the family and the land first was to sin, was to fail to be pious, in the classical sense of doing proper homage to one’s ancestors, and performing one’s duties. They did not see individual freedom as a good, not if it caused one to be disloyal to one’s duties to family and place. The idea that God would put a calling on one’s life that would cause one to desire something other than to be right here with family, on the place, was difficult to impossible for them to accept. The only reason in their mind that I could desire something other than they desired is that I was disordered in some way. They really did see this as a moral failing on my part, and as a sign of weak character.

The thing is, we were all wrong. An authentic and truthful life requires both freedom and restraint, held in equipoise. It’s very hard to do, and requires work, especially the work of self-examination, and repentance. And you never really do know if you’ve got it right. In Little Way, I worked hard not to romanticize small-town life, nor to demonize it. This is a great place, and I’m grateful to God that He changed my heart such that I could recognize and accept the great things about it. But it is not Utopia. Utopia doesn’t exist. We happen to live in a culture that in most cases disdains the limits that small-town and traditional family life imposes on the individual; in our culture, people like my sister, who stayed home and was satisfied with her life, don’t often write books, movies, or songs. Me, I was especially fond of the literature of alienation and exile, and of urbanity, because that was truest to my own experience and desire.

But it told only a partial truth.

But there is also a temptation, though a far less dominant one, to romanticize family and place, and to turn small towns and rural places into reverse negatives of the idealized city. You see this in ideological forms of country music. My dad and my sister held fast to this, just as much as I did to its opposite … and even moreso, as we aged.

But it too only told a partial truth.

The whole truth, I think, cannot be stated as a proposition, or reduced to a formula, or a set of ethical precepts. It has to be lived, and discerned through experience, through coming and going, through waxing and waning, and through loving each other and seeking together to order our lives rightly under God. In very broad Kierkegaardian terms, I was for a long time the Aesthete, and Paw and Ruthie were the Ethicists. Only in the Religious mode could we rightly join these two lesser modes, and put them in proper relation to each other, and to our own lives. Here’s a glimpse of what I’m getting at with this. But I need to think about this more, and to develop this insight further. Maybe there’s a novel in it…

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6 Responses to Idols And Counterfeit Gods

That piece you link to about Kierkegaard and ultimately about Abraham and Isaac seems to me to be making (one of) the point(s) that Orwell makes in Reflections on Gandhi — that the saint is someone who behaves in a manner that most of us would call “inhuman.” The saint is someone who is willing to hurt the people who are supposed to be closest to him; the saint is someone who does not love in the way that most human beings understand the word “love.”

One must put *everything* aside in one’s devotion, faith, and trust in God, according to Kierkegaard. His third stage, or sphere, is measured by the intensity of one’s belief, by the amount of commitment.

From the piece: “”Is there a teleological suspension of the ethical; that is to say, are there situations in which a man can be forced to disregard ethical demands for a higher authority?” Kierkegaard answers this question in the affirmative; and it is in just this that the paradoxical character of religion is made plain, since it can lead to demands which, from the point of view of ordinary ethics, are unethical…”

It is almost too easy to see both Nietzsche’s writings on the triumph of the will, and the ideologies of terrorism and suicide bombings, in this statement.

Kierkegaard’s use of an Old Testament story to make his point is important, I think. Could we find something in the New Testament that is the equivalent of this story? I’m not so sure. The closest thing might be Jesus telling his followers that they must hate their own children for His sake. Hate, but not kill… And the rich young ruler has to give away all of his money, which is a very different thing from taking a life. The intensity of commitment required here, the disavowing of even the good, is less. Does Christianity, alone among religions, create an ideal of sainthood that does not depend solely on intensity of belief, on the intensity of rejection of the physical world, but preserves some aspect of the ethical system which Kierkegaard would say the highest level of faith must *reject*?

“I’m looking it over, I’m struck by the aspect of the idols that Paw, Ruthie, and I served was that they were not obviously bad things, like Money, Sex, or Power. (Strictly speaking, none of those things are bad either, but they are so closely associated with misuse and abuse that we are rightly cautious of their effect on our moral sense).”

I see your point that Keller’s outlook can be somewhat simplistic from a a chapter title level, but if you do read the book, he does make a better disctinction between idols, including the fact that the perverted good is an idol and how the same face-value idol (eg, money) can manifest itself differently depending on one’s root causes. For instance (pp 64-66):

“…Sin in out hearts affects our basic motivational drives so that the become idolatrous, “deep idols.” Some people are strongly motivated by a desire for influence and power, while others are more excited by approval and appreciation. Some want emotional and physical comfort more than anything else, whilte still others want security, the control of their environment. People with the deep idol of power do not mind being unpopular in order to gain influence. People who are the most motivated by approval are the opposite–they will gladly lose power and control so long as everyone thinks well of them. Each deep idol–power, approval, comfort, cotrol–generates a different set of fears and hopes.

“Surface idols” are such things as monet, our spouse, or children, through which our deep idols seek fulfillment. We are often superficial in our analysis of our idol structures. For example money can be a surface idol that serves to motivate more fundamental impulses. Some people want a lot of money as a way to control their world and their life. Such people usually don’t spend much money and live very modestly. They keep it all safely saved and invested so they can feel completely secure in the world. Others want money for access to social circles and to make themselves more beautiful and attractive. These people do spend money on themselves in lavish ways.”

Keller spends quite a bit of time emphasizing how crucial it is to suss out one’s deepest motivations. If you will-power your way out of one behavior without confronting what drew you to it in the first place, another thing will crop up.

“Idols and Counterfeit Gods” – what a challenging topic for reflection. St. Thomas Aquinas listed four false gods or idols: a) pleasure, b) power, c) possessions, and, d) honor. Aquinas didn’t mean that these are always bad things, but that they are idols if we put them before God and obedience to His will (as we poor mortals can understand God’s will).

Idols are tricky, deceitful things – they glisten like gold and usually end up as dust in our hands. And they can come from the most surprising places in the heart. I once read that religious people tend to have religious idols – the more crass idols are too obvious. Please don’t ask me to name any religious idols – that is for you to think about, if you wish!

My point is that idols are insidious and to live a fully human life, all of us, including atheists, would benefit from reflecting on which idols push aside the best in us and diminish us as persons.

I’m suspicious when people call good and useful endeavours and interests ‘idols’. It strikes me as guilt manipulation on the part of people who would rather that you follow _their_ idol. As always, you need to maintain balance in your life between your own interests, and serving the interests of others. I decline to be shamed by people who want to call my interests and talents ‘idols’.

I suppose my deepest idol, which I have only recently really seen, is my own life. (It could also be called my “life’s project” or “life’s agenda” or “life’s success.”)

I think our culture strongly encourages this idol at all stages, especially in bright kids. It is the narcissistic bent of our culture writ small in us (even as our individual solipsistic sin is writ large in the world.)

It seems to me more and more that the heart of Jesus’ teaching is: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” Mt. 16:24-25

My true life is in God, says the Gospel, not in myself or my ideal of myself, or in the world’s idea of me. My true life is beyond me in God, which I access by faith, and in doing that I have to leave behind “my life” (agenda, project, success) as I think of it, and/or as the world thinks of it and tells me it should be.

This is the meaning of “repentance,” to turn to Christ and away from myself, away from my idea of my own life, my self- idol. It is the simplest and yet the hardest thing to do always. And yet “dying ” in this way is the only real freedom, the only real life, something, the only thing, that will last forever.